Willing warriors a new history of the education culture wars Mark Hlavacik

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hlavacik, Mark, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Education--Political aspects--United States.

Education.

Culture conflict--United States.

Culture conflict.

Education--United States--History--20th century.

Education--United States--History--21st century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Chicago, IL London The University of Chicago Press 2025

Summary:

"How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education. On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible. In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people-the willing warriors-who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment"-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Introduction : education's culture of conflict

The fall of man : a course of study

Allan Bloom's rotten rhetoric of exposé

Lynne Cheney's exposé of political correctness

The common core background

The battle of 1619

Conclusion : resisting education's culture of conflict

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Print version record

Other Format:

Print version Hlavacik, Mark Willing warriors

ISBN:

9780226844701

0226844706

OCLC:

1559561731

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license